Tag: Islam

An Indian Muslim leader has demanded Salman Rushdie be banned from the country’s biggest literary festival, warning that an invitation to the novelist who endured a fatwa will add “salt to injury”.

A Saudi woman was beheaded after being convicted of practicing “witchcraft and sorcery,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry, at least the second such execution for sorcery this year.

Militant Islamists have spread conspiracy theories about vaccinations – which has contributed to a resurgence in polio.

The headquarters of a satirical French newspaper were damaged by fire on Wednesday as a controversial special edition poking fun at Islamic law in Libya and Tunisia was set to hit newsstands.

Widespread belief in magic makes Saudis susceptible to fraud. When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women’s lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

The religious police in Saudi Arabia arrested five women on Tuesday for driving in defiance of a ban on women getting behind the wheel in the conservative kingdom, according to activists and local media reports.

Geert Wilders, the outspoken Dutch MP who branded Islam a violent religion and called the Koran a fascist book, has been acquitted of all charges of hate speech and discrimination at a trial seen as testing the boundaries of freedom of expression.

Pastor Terry Jones, the Florida man who burned a Koran in March, triggering a wave of violence in Afghanistan, appears on a Fox program with an imam and a moderate Christian cleric.

France’s controversial ban on wearing burqas, a full-body covering that includes a mesh over the face, and niqabs, a full-face veil that leaves an opening only for the eyes, took effect today.

Islamic fundamentalists are embracing democracy, alarming those who believe that they are seeking to put in place strict Islamic law through ballots.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian and Pakistan’s minority affairs minister, is the second top official in the past two months to be killed after opposing harsh blasphemy laws.

Is freedom a religious idea? As John McEnroe would have said, “You cannot be serious.” If you value freedom, you should flee from religion as the antelope flees the lion.

The depressing public reaction to the assassination of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer.

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared Turkey with Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution, saying Israel will “not be Turkey’s punching bag.” Writing in Thursday’s Jerusalem Post, Mr Lieberman blamed the crisis in bilateral ties between Jerusalem and Ankara on internal developments in Turkey.

In Pakistan’s huge port city of Karachi, religious scholars united to forbid mourning. They urged pious Muslims not to offer funeral prayers for the outspoken governor of the Punhjab, Salmaan Taseer, who had most recently made headlines by championing the rights of Aasia Bibi, a Christian convert facing execution because of the country’s blasphemy laws.

The 26-year-old smiling assassin who killed Pakistani politician Salman Taseer is an elite commando trained by the government, motivated by religious zeal and praised by hardline clerics. Officials said he volunteered for duty that day, made sure his weapon was fully armed and then waited for his boss to walk towards his waiting car, before reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”, opening fire and surrendering.

Extremism associated with Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law appeared to claim another victim Tuesday, when the governor of the country’s wealthiest and most politically powerful province was gunned down in Islamabad by a 26-year-old member of his own security detail. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, was shot at close range by a newly assigned guard who told authorities and the media he was angry about Taseer’s criticism of Pakistan’s law against blasphemy, considered the most draconian of any Muslim-majority country.

Egyptian officials now believe that an attack on a church which killed at least 21 worshippers in Alexandria was the work of a suicide bomber.

Christians in Nigeria were attacked at several locales in Nigeria on Christmas Eve. Four separate explosions rocked the Jos region in central Nigeria, killing as many as 38.

Strikes paralyzed several cities in Pakistan, as demonstrators protested against a proposal to moderate the blasphemy law, which currently carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Islam, and which has been criticized for being used to persecute religious minorities.